A Few Things I'd Like to Learn from the Samurai

For most of my life, I’ve been fascinated by the warrior classes—especially, the ancient Samurai of feudal Japan.  To say they were a paradoxical people is an understatement.

The Samurai trained in the arts of life and death:  they studied and practiced haiku and swordsmanship…the tea ceremony and field applications of archery...gardening and submission grappling.  They prepared for the future, but didn't wait for it to happen; they lived in and for the moment as though tomorrow didn't exist—because, to them, it didn't.  They had children, and yet raised them to live as though Mom and Dad might not be around an hour hence.

Theirs was a way of life so utterly simple, and yet incomprehensibly complex.  They cultivated an unnatural naturalness and a natural unnaturalness in nearly every aspect of life, and they lived by an ancient, internal code that simply reminded them to be present and devoted completely to their current experience...for there really is nothing else. 

I recall a story I heard once about a martial arts instructor, who posed the following question to his adult students:  “If you discovered that you had only twenty-four hours left to live, what would you do with the time you had left?”  The answers he received were varied, as one might expect.  Some spoke of how they would spend their time with their families; others of how they would visit places they’d always wanted to see but never did; and still others of how they would devote themselves to some form of service to humanity.

After listening intently for a few minutes, the teacher beckoned his students to stillness and then spoke of his disappointment with the answers they’d all given.  “No one answered with what I would consider the best answer possible," he began.  "And that's this:  I wouldn't live any differently than the way I'm living right now, right here.”

Profound, and, most definitely, something to consider, would you not agree?

In the United States alone, more than two million people died last year—many from things unexpected.  Just like some of us will, too, someday.  Perhaps, even, today.

I’d like to ask you the very same question the instructor I mentioned above asked his students so very long ago...

If you had only twenty-four hours left to live, and knew it, how differently would you live that last day than the way you'd lived, say, the previous 365 days?

Take a few minutes, and really give it some thought.  Perhaps, even, write your answers down or, even better, go and live them out—and do it today...right now.  And then do it tomorrow...and the day after that...and the day after that, should you, Lord-willing, be blessed with such a precious gift.

Peace,

Bling

W/r/t some of the thoughts in this blog, I am indebted to the thinking of Larry Richardson and Thomas Cleary, whose writings and historical observations of the ancient Samurai continue to shape my thinking—even to this day, and after all these many years.